Upgraded the final computer - the server host that has the VM with our Kodi stuff. It was the least complicated upgrade - didn’t have to remove anything - it just worked. And that was a great change, for once. (Not that the others were too much of a pain).

Lots of artists made their spot because I attended a concert or discovered them this year and got very enthusiastic about listening to this new artist. There are also lots of Spotify scrobbles, but not as many as there would be if work’s firewall didn’t keep scrobbles from being counted.

Artists

1. Anberlin (427 listens)
2. Fall Out boy (239 listens)
3. Jim Guthrie (221 listens)
4. I Fight Dragons (214 listens)
5. Paul and Storm (190 listens) - A nerdy folksy group that I really like. Their irreverence is my kind of fun.
6. The Beatles (136 listens)
7. Anamanaguchi (130 listens)
8. Lionize (130 listens)
9. Five Iron Frenzy (128 listens)
10. Louis Jordan (113 listens)
11. The Protomen (104 listens)
12. Beebs and Her Money Makers (104 listens)
13. Willy Chirino (93 listens)
14. Katy Perry (93 listens)
15. Ignacio Cervantes (92 listens)

Songs

Interestingly, only two new songs made the list this year - Talking Body and Know Yourself. Because I don’t listen to the radio, I discovered these via Spotify. The rest are all older songs that I happened to listen to a lot. And Chandelier came from Danielle getting the album and asking me to play it in the car.

This was not a big quarter for listening to music for me. That’s mostly because Sam and Stella were born and so I didn’t have much ability to listen to music as I needed to be able to hear if they were crying or if someone needed help with them. According to last.fm I went from 1,104 scrobbles in Oct to 288 in November.

1. Beebs and Her Money Makers (94 listens) - one of the songs came up randomly in Amarok which led me to listen through the albums a few times.
2. The Beatles (55 listens)
3. Kenny Clarke (44 listens) - A Fresh Air review of a new collection got me interested in him so I added it to my Spotify tracks. Really fun music.
4. Anberlin (34 listens)
5. DJ Cutman (33 listens) - I don’t know why, but I ended up with a lot of DJ Cutman music on my new phone and since I don’t like to use bandwidth while I’m driving, I’ve listened to it a lot in the car.
6. Ignacio Cervantes (32 listens)
7. Fall Out Boy (29 listens)
8. Danny Elfman (28 listens)
9. Katy Perry (26 listens) - all from Scarlett requests
10. Relent K (25 listens)
11. Five Iron Frenzy (24 listens)
12. Jonathan Geer (19 listens)
13. Vampire Weekend (18 listens) - heard a song so I wanted to re-explore the band. Some of the songs still hit me hard and others have faded.
14. Sergei Prokofiev (17 listens)
15. Anamanaguchi 16 listens)

Stats: Total Songs (in my collection): 16985 (Up from 16088 ) – Mostly from buying CDs with 100 tracks of various classical artists.

This year I took ebooks and comics with me when visiting the in-laws and took advantage of having books on my phone to read in idle moments when listening to podcasts wouldn’t make sense - say I needed to be able to hear my name being called. So I was able to read 86 books this year (287% of my Goodreads goal of 30). Although audiobooks mess this stat up, I read 21,160 pages according to Goodreads. Also according to Goodreads my least popular book was Big Pulp: Ted Bundy’s Beetle which was only read by one other person. My most popular book was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone which was read by nearly 4 million other people.

2015 turned out to be an incredible  year for videos games for me. That’s a good thing because I was playing for the Extra Life charity to raise money for Johns Hopkins. I’d heard about it when the Giant Bomb guys spoke about it, but this year I had a reason - Johns Hopkins had saved Scarlett’s life twice! I’d experimented with recording myself playing video games when Dan started his Let’s Plays and used Camtasia. But there was no way I could justify paying $100 to record myself playing games. Then I discovered OBS which was, in typical FLOSS fashion, impossible to figure out. But then I found XSplit which had recently gone to having a freemium model. Once I learned what all the terminology was in XSplit I was able to go back to OBS - which I did because they actually catered to Linux in addition to Windows. The most fun moments have been when people have stepped into my Twitch or Youtube Gaming channels and chatted during the game. It brings back the social aspect that I grew up with back before everyone had internet.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown (15 hours):

https://youtu.be/GNSX2FaV2hY?list=PLEJrELYLxNgVMLzx98YPIGhKdSDiGFjaU

I wanted to finish XCOM: Enemy Unknown before 2015 was over and I succeeded. Despite being screwed over by scripting errors in the big “dungeons”, I had a lot of fun with the game. The ending was slightly anti-climactic, but then again, this game only had the barest of storylines. I’d DEFINITELY play it again….once I finished going through the hundred or so unplayed games I already own.

Level Zero by Jaron Lee Knuth

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I understand what Mr Knuth was trying to accomplish with this narrative. While the plot twist was neither original nor unpredictable, it really wasn’t the point of this story. In fact, while reading I was thinking this book would warrant a 1 or 2 star rating. It took a long time to get anywhere and seemed to be too meandering. I figured that’s because it was book one of a series and we weren’t going to get a conclusion. But no, this book stands alone just fine.

Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

First of all, I strongly recommend reading this right after The Last Colony. It’s been as long time since I read it and so it took some effort for me to remember the original story beats this was supposed to be referencing.

Second, Scalzi does a great job retelling the story and adding lots of depth to it. It brought a new perspective to events from the last book. The contrast between the way adults and teens handled things seemed spot on.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have not been a part of the Harry Potter fandom, so I don’t know if anything I’m going to mention here has been answered in interviews or wikis, etc. I doubt Ms Rowling had the entire seven book series planned from the beginning. However, it’s pretty clear that sometime around book 2 or 3 she did a general outline of the rest of the series because it has all fight together so nicely - and not in a cheap way. Again, not having been a part of the fandom, I’m unaware if there’s some glaring plot hole, but overall it seems to fit quite, quite well. Each book matured not just in the tone of the prose and the subject matter, but also in the lifting of the veil of protection kids feel from adults. The adults were revealed to be selfish and have impure motives and, in the case of the worst of them, no problems being violent to children.